Diversity within Science and its Community

1
Diversity within Science and its Community

• Taner Edis
• Division of Science Physics
• www2.truman.edu/edis

2
Diverse or uniform?

• Diversity OK as abstract principle, but what
  happens in specific institutional contexts?
  Complicated
• Culture of science is ambivalent
• Good example of current diversity and of progress
  towards diversity, but also
• Science is a monoculture it welcomes previously
  excluded people on condition they adapt to this
  preexisting culture.

3
Ethnic diversity A

• People from all national backgrounds do science.
  Common to work together.
• Poor populations underrepresented, but not due to
  exclusion.
• I hail from Turkey, have worked with Hungarians,
  Serbs, Indians, Chinese
• The results of science are available to all.
  (Reason for atrocious writing style of journals.)

4
Gender diversity C

• Science slower in opening up to women,
  particularly in hard sciences such as physics.
  Loss in Ph.D. pipeline.
• Unwelcoming culture women do better in biology,
  math, astronomy.
• Institutions have operated on slave-to-research
  model. A wife is assumed to take care of all
  non-physics aspects of life, even career-related
  socialization.

5
Improving diversity

• Lack of gender diversity bad for science
• Social and political climate has changed.
• Not good to exclude talent.
• Slowly, things are changing. Theres
  institutional awareness of the problem.
• But note
• Weak intrinsic commitment to diversity
  motivation is health of science.
• There still is enough male talent in physics.

6
Where diversity fits

• Reasons science may welcome diversity
• Science aims to be valid for all, regardless of
  nationality, gender etc. We all have to live
  with gravity.
• Bad historical experience with Aryan science or
  Jewish science drivel.
• So good science must be open to people from all
  backgrounds, and diversity is a sign of health.

7
Where diversity strains

• Science is open on its own terms
• Aspiring scientists are required to join a
  pre-existing culture. To do science.
• This culture is not rigid, but change needs to be
  justified as a way of improving scientific
  practice.
• Scientists suspicious of feminist, Afrocentric,
  religion-based attempts to introduce other ways
  of knowing.

8
Multiculturalism?

• The culture of science is explicitly
  universalistic it does not go well with
  extensive multiculturalism. E.g. if a culture
  supports creationism, it is wrong.
• Science depends on the freedom to criticize
  dethroning white patriarchal Christianity just to
  replace it with a more inclusive set of sacred
  cows is no improvement.

9
What does this mean?

• The interests of scientists and
  diversity-advocates often overlap. But they can
  also clash.
• Few scientists would object to diversity as a way
  of fleshing out sciences commitment to openness.
• Calls for diversity will meet resistance if they
  come as a heavy-handed identity politics which
  restricts free inquiry.